Unearthed: Bulgarian ‘vampire’ skeletons

Archaeologists in the Black Sea town of Sozopol uncover two 800-year-old skeletons with stakes through their chests

“If you thought vampires were simply the stuff of myth and legend — and perhaps the odd teen horror film — think again,” says Daniel Miller at Britain’s Daily Mail. Last weekend, archaeologists in the Bulgarian Black Sea town of Sozopol unearthed two 800-year-old skeletons with iron rods piercing their chests, an apparent sign that locals believed it might occur to the two men to rise from the dead and terrorize the town. These aren’t the first “vampire skeleton” burials discovered in Balkan countries, nor did the practice die out in Medieval times — it was “common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century,” says Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of Bulgaria’s National History Museum. Here, a look at the “vampires” of Central Europe: